One and a Half Years Old!

One and a half might be my favorite stage so far.  Life is so much more simple than it used to be and Allie and Harper aren't babies anymore.  These ladies run, slide, climb, talk, and eat like real people.  I've been kinda fuzzy until recently about whether life with twins gets easier.  It is easier than the newborn days, but I think until about 16 or 17 months there were only certain days when taking care of A&H didn't feel like a strategic game to master.  These days we eat three meals a day and one snack. They walk themselves to the car, and most of the time we can successfully make it through a parking lot with both of them holding my hands. No more breaking out the double stroller just to get them to their classroom or inside the Y.  At playgrounds they climb and slide and I can sit on a bench and watch instead of worrying one is about to back off a ledge while I'm catching the other one at the end of a slide.


But mostly I love how funny they are now that they are talking.  Allie keeps a running commentary, babbling sentences with a few comprehensible words.  Harper constantly shouts words and identifies her surroundings.  They are both good at saying bye-bye and thank you when prompted.  Harper lets you know what she needs and wants Allie to get whatever she has.  She'll say "banan" and I'll give her a banana and then immediately "Ah-ee" commanding me to give Allie a "hunk" (we eat hunks of banana).  When she gets put in the stroller, she says "Ay-ee" so I don't forget to put "Ay-ee" in too.  I'm glad I've got one to keep an eye on the other.

At their 18 month visit over a month ago, Allie was 32.5 inches (77th %ile) and 24.5 lbs (56th %ile).  She loves to be read to and flip through books. Right now her favorite books are Amelia Bedelia and the Baby and Madeline.  She likes riding her "bike" and really loves a good slide, the big and faster, the better.  She also enjoys flushing toilets, turning on faucets, cooking in her kitchen, and singing "bitsy bitsy" and "ABCBD." Lately she has been particularly cuddly and I just realized this morning that a canine tooth is poking through, so with all four molars she now has 13 teeth!  She's also starting to take more interest in stuffed animals and soft blankets.  The other day I watched her pat one of her bunnies to sleep and cover it with a blanket.

At her 18th month appointment, Harper was 31.5 inches (47th %ile) and 23.5 lbs (40th %ile).  Harper enjoys identifying shoes (croc shoe, ked shoe, church shoe, etc.), trying on different pairs of shoes, throwing things into the bathtub, and singing "itsy bitsy," and "noah, noah." She is very loud and her walk is more of a sashay.  The Academy Award for Best Actress goes to Harper when we drop her off at the nursery, school, or Y.  She is fine 30 seconds after we leave but puts on a true show for Mom and Dad.  She has all four molars too and 12 total teeth.

They both enjoy pushing their baby stroller, eating "goldsheesh," saying no, swinging, swimming, tea parties, and wearing sunglasses.  We nap in separate rooms and after switching Allie to the pack and play we get three hours on a good day, usually from 1 to 3:30 or 4.  They go to sleep sometime before 8 and these days have been sleeping til around 8:30.  What a joy they are!

We went to the beach last week with my mom, sister, and San-San and had a blast.  They loved the beach, especially on the first day.  Our friend in swim lessons told us to try climbing in and out of the pool ("elbow, elbow, knee, knee") and they did that for hours.

Allie loves swinging on the railing

Harper

He is Risen!

Easter candy, pink bunnies, and plastic eggs still linger around here and they are a good reminder that He is Risen!   While I don't think Allie and Harper understand anything about Who rose on Easter, they definitely understood hunting for Easter eggs, especially Harper.  I have to admit that we cheated with a practice hunt in our yard:

The score was Harper 7, Allie 3 on that round, and Allie needed extra help because she was more interested in opening and closing eggs than finding more.  Harper was out for more, more, more on each hunt. 

We were 2 minutes late to our neighborhood hunt and all the eggs were gone by the time we got there, but A&H still got to hang with their mentor Lucy.

 

Harper did manage to collect a few eggs from the baskets of other unsuspecting toddlers, but she was smart enough to carefully guard the eggs in her own Easter basket, which she carried around about half the week.

At our church egg hunt, I got distracted trying trying to corral Allie and my sisters' dog, so Harper had about 15 eggs before the whistle blew.  I promise we weren't intentionally cheating that time.  Score: Harper 20 - Allie 7.  Allie's improving, and would have done well if Harper hadn't gotten so much of a head start.

Lovey made Easter weekend in the mountains very festive with egg dying and two more egg hunts.  We were thrilled to have my grandmother San-San with us all weekend.  Come Easter Sunday, Allie was hunting with the best of them and Harper dominated her age group.

He is risen indeed!

A&H's New Room

We love our new house and thanks to all the moving help from our parents, we settled in quickly.  I thought it would be fun for Allie and Harper to look back at this blog and see their old rooms.  I may add a rug, some curtains, and a white bookshelf, but it will stay like this for a while.  My mom arranged everything.  The cribs came from my grandmother, San-San.  She bought one for my 16 year old cousin, when she was a baby of course, and one for her house.  Yes, they do have drop sides, which are banned now, but I wasn't worried about it because it is nearly impossible to figure out how to make the sides drop. 

I love the blueberries print above the glider.  My friend Georgia (see her blog and etsy shop-most fabulous pound cake you will ever put in your mouth, I promise, and her spicy sweet pecans are amazing) saw it at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens and directed me to the artist, Hillary Parker.

The Herend cups with a prince charming frog were the sweetest first birthday gift from our friends Camp and Virginia.

And my other grandmother, Ellie, made a watercolor of a photo of me when I was a little girl with my favorite stuffed animals. 

I treasure this painting and love that I have many pictures of Allie and Harper at the same table.

And here are a few pictures of Allie and Harper's first room at our old place:

Thanks to many friends and family for the donated items and help decorating!

New Home

We are really loving our new home. Allie and Harper are the perfect age to start enjoying our backyard, and heading outside is an easy and welcome change of scenery without having to leave the house.  Michael's parents brought us a housewarming present that Harper and Allie can't get enough of:

They love to "side"

This may be why they don't like me taking pictures -- oops!

I thought I would really miss our condo, but this neighborhood has a lot to offer to replace what we left.  I was most sad to not be able to walk to the grocery store, but turns out that it is totally possible.  It's a bit further and hillier than my old Trader Joe's walk and it is to Publix, but I need the workout.  I was a little sentimental about driving to the Botanical Gardens for the first time yesterday, but we love our new playground, Tanyard Creek Park, and we even saw a duck in the creek, which helped get over the loss of our daily Piedmont Park duck visits.

Allie at Tanyard Creek

We've loved having my sister and her dog Weezy in town!!

Loving Weezy.  We are working on being gentle.

Harper wants to wear her pig backpack everywhere.

Harper's love for backpacks has been helpful when I'm attempting to use the leashes.  The first experience with the leashes at the aquarium was out of control and looked like child abuse.  Today at the zoo they seemed to like the leashes, especially when I called it a tail.  This was a trial run; I still had the stroller, of course.  It was so much fun to see all the animals with their friend Charlie.

Go Tarheels!

Tonight UNC vs. Duke.  Let's go Heels!  I try not to remember lass than a month ago when Duke came back in the last two minutes to win by one.  It was a very sad ending to my birthday.  Let's redeem ourselves!

 

 

It's very difficult to get a decent shot of these active little cheerleaders. We tried!

16 Months and We're Moving!

We are moving on Saturday!  We have LOVED our time in Midtown.  The highlight has been walking everywhere:  Botanical Gardens, High Museum, Trader Joe's, Piedmont Park, dry cleaners, Publix,  and the library.  Allie and Harper almost always appreciate a good stroller ride (once I've wrestled them into the stroller) and it has been awesome to get out of the house and be productive running errands on foot.  Living here made me lose the baby weight and the first 16 months have been significantly easier because I could go almost all week without getting in my car.  Buckling two babies in car seats can be a lot of work.

We are really going to miss it here, but decided to move to be closer to our friends from church, Atlanta Westside.  Our close friends the Dutsons will be three houses away!  It will also be really nice to get to the car without going down two flights of stairs or an elevator.  And this will be the first house Michael and I have lived in -- I'm excited to have a back yard and maybe start a garden.

Also, my sister just moved to Atlanta and I could not be more thrilled.  The babies LOVE their T-Lo and her dog, Weezy.  Just one week in and I'm already experiencing the joys of having family close-by. We've even had two nights out without having to pay a sitter!

Allie and Harper are doing new funny things everyday.  They really do get more entertaining each week.

At 15.5 months, Allie was 30.5 inches tall (42nd %ile) and 23 lbs 2 oz (48th %ile), although, she was squirmy getting the height and I'm pretty sure she is taller than Harper.  Her favorite toys are ones you can pull with strings.  She also loves walking around with a mesh laundry basket over her head.   Her laugh is infectious and she is almost always joyful.  She does not, however, like to be woken up from a nap early or when you take something she is holding.  She gets fixated on random things and does not want to loosen her death grip on them. She is very strong.  Her new words are goldfish, bike, duck, Weezy, hot, open, up, baby, keys, and ice.  Real babies are very interesting to her, especially baby Josie Dutson.  This week she also peed on the potty!  (I'm not starting potty training, but let them sit on the potty if it's convenient, and I was so proud of her!  They are both very interested in the potty so maybe I'll start sooner than I think.)  To my dismay, it still takes her 30 minutes to an hour to go to sleep.  The majority of the time she is happy in her crib, but I wish she would cuddle up with her blanket and pass out in less than 5 minutes like her sister.  I dropped the morning nap because it was taking her so long to go to sleep, but I think this is just her style.  I guess she just likes her solitary play time in the crib.  I'm so thankful for the video monitor because at nap time Harper usually goes to sleep and wakes up an hour before Allie, so I can dash in and sneak Harper out before she wakes Allie up.  At her last eye doctor appointment, the doctor noticed for the first time that her droopy eyelid is starting to slightly affect her vision, so we've upped the patching to two hours a day.  Allie has been a great sport about it; she only rips off the patch early one or two days a week.

Harper was 31 inches tall (59th %ile) and 22 lbs. 2 oz (33rd %ile) at 15.5 months.  Harper loves to interact with others and has caught up with Allie on her words.  Because she is by nature more into people, she talks more and seems to always be trying to communicate something.  She had a week or two where she said, "UP!" 40 times a day and held up her hands to be picked up.  She is signing less as she can talk more.  Instead of signing "more" all the time, she says "mama, mama, mama" all the time.  I thought she just wanted a lot of me, but turns out she still just wants more ("mama") of everything.  Her new words are ice, juice, hot, keys, Tee-tee (for T-Lo), CiCi (grandmom), baby, and shoe.  She loves to get shoes out of the closet and bring them to me.  This is very helpful when it is time to get dressed because she knows her crocs from her keds and her church shoes and will bring me the correct pair for her and Allie when I ask her.  She is mama's little helper and I'm constantly amazed what missions she happy toddles off to complete: closing doors, putting away toys, bringing me items, wiping the floor, and putting things in the trash.  Allie knows exactly what I want her to do, but she's not as interested in helping as Harper.  Harper still loves her crib and loves to sleep.  She entertains herself for a good 20 minutes stacking these rings and wearing them as bracelets. These two ladies who have been raised the exact same way could not be more different.  Parents need to give themselves grace (or less credit) on how their kid sleeps, eats, performs, and obeys because to a large extent it's just who they are. 

I'm still missing the morning nap and wish that I had tried to hang onto it a little longer (I dropped it at 14.5 months).  We do have more adventures outside of the house, but miss the extra 1-2 hours to restore order to the house and have personal time.  I'm not planning as much as I did in the evenings because I need that time to do housework and catch up on email, etc.  They go down at 12:45 or 1 and usually only sleep for 1.5-2 hours.  I'm still waiting for it the lengthen out, but they are making up for the sleep with a late wake-up time, sometimes 8:30am.  I guess I can't have it all.

Here are some pictures from the zoo, the bath (they both think it's hilarious when the other one's hair is shampooed into a mohawk), a bath with Lucy, and snack time.